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This
is how my original picture looked like.
An ordinary portrait taken with soft light coming from a window
on the right side.
The
background is a bit dark so I wanted to lighten that a bit, plus
I wanted to lighten the shadows on the left side to decrease the
overall contrast in the picture - making it looking as soft as possible
before I added the desaturated hand colored effect.
Ok
- let's get started.
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Select
the Lasso Tool (L)
and select the areas in the background you want to lighten. When
that's done you have to feather your selection in order to get a
smooth result. To do this you go to Select - Feather - and then
add the amount you think suits the selection. For my large 1Ds2
digital files an amount of 100-120 pixels works well. Smaller files
need smaller amounts. Try a few different settings to see what amount
fits best.
Click
the Create new fill or adjustment layer button located on the Layers
palette and
select Curves.
For this dark background I added these
curves settings.
As you can see I've pulled back the dark colors quite a bit + I've
lightened the middle tones some as well.
(Keep
in mind that a lighter background might need just an adjustment
in the middle tones. A light background might not need to be altered
at all).
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After
you've added the curves adjustment layer just deselect your selection
(CTRL + D).
The
picture on the left shows how my picture looks like after adding
the adjustment layer. In addition to lighten up the background more
details are showing in the hair.
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Now
I wanted to lighten the turtle neck on her sweater a little bit.
Those strong contrasty colors really steals attention from her eyes.
(Yet I don't want to crop out the sweater either because I think
those pink colors compliment her skin very well).
Ok
- same technique as above. The Lasso Tool (L) to create the selection.
Selection - Feather - and a pretty large amount to smoothen the
selection.
And then I added this Levels
Adjustment layer to lighten the colors. (I've moved the middle slider
slightly to the left).
(To
add the Levels adjustment layer click on the Create new fill or
adjustment layer button located on the Layers palette
and select Levels).
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CTRL
+ D to deselect my selection.
As
you can see on the left the picture now look much lighter and her
turtle neck is a but softer in the colors as well.
Ok
- now to lighten up the shadows on the left side of her face a little
bit...
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Again
I used the Lasso Tool (L) to make my selection.
I selected
all of the picture except those light areas on the right side. Then
I feathered the selection with an amount of about 100 pixels. (For
pictures downsized for the web you might not need more than about
20 pixels - it's the size of the picture that decides the amount).
Then
I added a Curves Adjustment layer (like explained above) with these
settings.
Again
CTRL + D to deselect my selection as soon as I've added the adjustment
layer.
(You
can adjust the adjustment layer afterwards with a soft white brush
to add to the selection, or a black brush to subtract from the selection
- just paint directly on the adjustment layer itself).
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Now
my picture looked like the one shown on the left side.
Much better than when we started out don't you think?
I could
have stopped here, but I continued to play and trying out different
settings some more.
The
next step really isn't necessary, but I'll show you what I did anyway
since I think it added some extra glow and evened out her face a
little bit more. If the next step doesn't suit your image just forget
all about it - or you can keep the technique in mind for other pictures).
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On
this step I added a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with these
settings. Then I lowered the opacity to 40% and changed the mode
to Overlay (you find all these settings in the layers palette).
To
modify the highlights on this layer I added a new adjustment layer
but this time I added it from the Layer drop down menu;
Layer
- New Adjustment layer - Curves - and then I checked the "Use
Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask" option.
I then
used these settings.
(As you can see from the settings I've turned down the whites quite
a bit to avoid blown highlights).
Ok
- not much difference - but her skin is more even with a slight
glow to it.
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Now
to the fun part :)
Set
black as your foreground color and white as your background color.
Hit
the Create new fill or adjustmentlayer tab
and select Gradient Map and click OK. (If your image looks like
a film negative with the colors reversed check the Reverse tab).
Now
turn down the opacity on the Gradient Map layer to approx 74%.
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Still
with black as your foreground color select a soft brush and turn
down the opacity to about 20-30%.
Now
gently use the brush to paint back some of the colors (directly
on the Gradient Map leyer).
Turning down the opacity on the Gradient Map layer already reveals
some of the colors, giving a slight sephia feel to the picture.
Now we just add some extra color to the lips, the cheeks, the eyes
and for this picture some of the colors in the turtle neck sweater.
Use different size for the brush on the different areas and be sure
to not use the brush many times on the same spot.
And
now we're done!
Well
almost - I desided to add a couple of more steps...
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I wanted
to add a more soft frame around her face.
To
do that I added a new layer and used a white brush to draw some
white areas in the corners and some on the side.
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I
then did a Blur - Gaussion Blur - and added an amount that really
softened the strokes and made them all blurry like shown in the picture
on the left. |
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Final
step before I was happy!
When
all this was done I felt her eyes needed to be lightened a bit,
and used the Lasso Tool to select the area around both her eyes
(be sure to check the "Add to selection" option to be
able to select the area around both eyes ).
Select
- Feather - think I used about 30 pixels here to soften the selection.
I then added a Levels adjustment layer with these
setting to lighten the eyes to my liking.
CTRL
+ D to deselect.
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The
final result!
Hope
this tutorial was of help and that you got some ideas you can use
:)
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